OK, I knew this point was coming, but I've finally reached my "OK, I'm done grinding and there's not really a good story in this game" point. Almost through the third maze, my party is level 42 and I unlocked subclassing. The game was quite fun while I still had a stomach for it, though. Definitely worth the money.

I haven't had to grind at all yet. The game gives you so many options to get experience without having to grind(quests, missions, caves, rare breeds, etc.). The additional stat bonuses that food give you helps to alleviate some trouble against FOEs, too.

I'm still in Labyrinth 2. Progress is a lot slower than I expected, but I refuse to switch to Casual. I refuse! I look forward to unlocking Arcanist. I'm probably going to replace my Medic because I find them overly specialized. A Dancer and an Arcanist should cover my bases, aside from revival. Guess I'll need to stock up on Nectar.

I also want to rest half of my party and re-allocate my skills, which I should've seen coming. I get so stressed out when it comes time to spend skill points!

I think I said "grinding" and meant a different context - I view most dungeon crawlers as a whole as "grinding" since they're almost entirely combat and exploration. I didn't mean it in the "oh man I have to fight a bunch of enemies to get past the next thing". In fact, EOIV has a pretty damn smooth difficulty curve, though things got really easy after I got subclassing - regen w/ active circle for an arcanist made it so I almost never died.

I think I said "grinding" and meant a different context - I view most dungeon crawlers as a whole as "grinding" since they're almost entirely combat and exploration. I didn't mean it in the "oh man I have to fight a bunch of enemies to get past the next thing". In fact, EOIV has a pretty damn smooth difficulty curve, though things got really easy after I got subclassing - regen w/ active circle for an arcanist made it so I almost never died.

Yeah, at worst EO tends to only have masked grinding unless you're deliberately bringing extra characters up, and even then you can work around that with items (though maybe you only get two or three through the whole game?) or giving your new guys all the EXP from quests. Bailing out of dungeons because you got too much crap or drained of resources is SIMILAR to a grind, but at least I'm constantly pushing my envelope rather than just pacing back and forth for hours.

I think one little small bonus I liked was that walls with shortcuts have "hints" that there's a shortcut there, so you don't need to turn sideways on every panel, since the wall panels have a new design or coloring variations. This definitely saves time and I wish I had noticed it before the very obvious 4th Stratum. Next someone will tell me that it's been there in the earlier EOs and I never noticed.

Serves me right for never paying attention to the wall design closely, I suppose. I think it's another of those small things that makes EO more accessible than older dungeon crawlers in that any visual clue is given at all. I can see it being shocking when someone who starts the genre with EO plays something like Wizardry or even a newer title like The Dark Spire and you have to face everything in just the right way or you won't get any of the little "check" triggers where you can just stand on the block in this series.

Having trouble with the last boss in the lush woodlands. My whole party is level 18. L, N, M, S, and R.

Never had much luck with these games. I believe I just don't have my skills setup right. I wish the games had more stats in the descriptions, rather than just up and down arrows to indicate strength...